


Everyone and Everything

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Abhorsen AU, Canon-typical violence and content, F/M, Past Chuck Hansen/Mako Mori - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27048580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: Pentecost meansabhorsenin one of the old tongues.
Relationships: Hercules Hansen/Stacker Pentecost, Raleigh Becket/Mako Mori
Comments: 11
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fusion of the 2013 Pacific Rim movie and _Sabriel_ by Garth Nix. 90% of it was written in 2014-15 with only minimal editing since then, but I recently picked it up because a Rhod Chang always pays her debts and finishes her plate. Portions were [posted to Tumblr](https://quigonejinn.tumblr.com/tagged/au:%20pacific%20rim%20abhorsen) previously. Chapters 1-7 are now written, and I'm working on 8. 
> 
> Comments are available to registered users only, even though this isn't a MZDS/CQL fic, because of the local troll.

Grass, wall, and death: Pentecost means _abhorsen_ in one of the old tongues. 

…

Snow, wall, and duty: ten years later, Mako Mori sketches a complicated Charter symbol in the air with her fingers. Forty terrified girls lie back in their beds, leaving her to face a creature that manifests on the physical plane as intense darkness that absorbs light without reflecting any back. 

Calmly, she steps into death, where it is dark and cold. A river pours around her legs, eager to pull her over and carry her away. But Mako exerts her will, and it becomes mere sensation. She breathes in carefully, then out steadily. She holds out both of her hands and claps. The sound echoes. Before the echo fades, she whistles several notes, clear and true.

In the morning, she takes a cab to Bain, then the bus to the garrison, where she is known by sight. They test her Charter mark anyways: the caution drilled into them by a careful, conscientious officer. Mako approves.

....

After she passes, they take her to the colonel, who makes her tea on his spirit-stove and listens to every word of what she tells him. His blue eyes steady and serious.

“If he is not yet dead, I must return the bells to him,” Mako says. "You understand.“

"I do,” he says, softly. He touches his right hand to the beeswax-rubbed leather of the bandolier on the table between them. 

Mako sleeps the night in a bit of a store room sectioned off with wool blankets. In the morning, she comes into the cold air to find Chuck strapping skis onto his feet. His pack is propped against a tree. From its size, she can tell that he intends more than a few hours escort in the shadow of the wall: instead, he plans to come with her deep into the Old Kingdom. Mako points out that she might not be the Pentecost, but she is the Pentecost-in-waiting and a perfectly competent Charter magician. Chuck makes a skeptical noise and points out that she has spent most of the past seven years in Ancelstierre, living easy at a fancy school. 

Spots of red appear on Mako’s cheeks. She is about to list, at length, the rigors and virtues of life at Wyverly when Colonel Hansen comes out.

Mako glares at Chuck. Chuck glares at his father. 

Colonel Hansen comes over and gives Mako a tight hug – her hood is pushed back, and he presses a newly-shaved cheek to her hair. Mako smells soap and hot water. Chuck continues to glare, but without another word passing between them, Chuck and Mako ski out together underneath a winter sky like an overturned bowl. 

They intend to make their way to the Shatterdome by dawn.


	2. Chapter 2

At seven, Mako came to the Shatterdome, Stacker carrying her across in his arms because the path was low and set close to the water, slippery with spray, and they had walked a long, long way. She climbed most of the steps in the cliff face by herself, then faced down the close, somewhat damp passageway illuminated by the Charter marks. She made a noise in her throat. Using gestures, Stacker showed that he could carry her through, but she took his right hand and looked into the darkness. 

Afterwards, they came through the second doorway and back in the late afternoon light, honey gold with summer. 

Stacker remembers: he looked down at the small face. 

...

A fresh smear of rock mud across one cheek from a tight spot where it was slightly too narrow for them to walk side by side. Mouth, grim and set. The expression hinted at crying, but if she had cried, she did it silently, holding Stacker’s hand harder in place of making noise. Looking down, Stacker studies the eyes fixed resolutely, firmly at the far distance. Below them are two clean tracks, carved in days of grime and grit and travel: he had found her, hiding in a rock crevice while Dead Hands murdered her family and every living creature associated with their caravan. She waited, terrified, hungry, thirsty, utterly alone. Dead Hands scrabbled and pressed and threw themselves at her hiding place, missing her by only inches, until Stacker came upon the caravan by chance. 

Then: the long walk, the process of visiting village after village, town after town, hoping that someone would have news or kin or speak a language that Mako understood. 

Then: Sendings in cloaks, the dark, wet passageway with rough rock that caught on clothes and hands like the grasping fingers of Hands, trying to reach bright life. 

Mako is still holding onto his right hand. Stacker studies Mako’s face for another moment, then sets down his pack and staff. 

He shapes a small Charter magic so that his feet will be sure, then holds his arms out to Mako: after a week of traveling, they understand each other. Having demonstrated her courage in the face of fear, Mako is now willing to accept comfort and help. She climbs into his arms and keeps her face buried against the surcoat Stacker wears over mail. They go over the rocks, waterfall thundering on their left, Stacker being very careful even with the aid of the Charter marks glowing on his boots. Instead of setting Mako down on shore and going back for his pack, Stacker continues: he keeps her in his arms, and they go through the blue door with the lion knocker, then along the dusty-apple brick road.

They come, eventually, to a courtyard in front of the main building. Mako twists around to look at the Sendings gathered there, some like the gatekeepers at the cliffs, others so old that they are more like thickenings in the air than an actual shape.

Stacker says a set of words to them, then puts Mako down on the ground. Years later, Mako learns what the Pentecost tells the Sendings and the Shatterdome and, in fact, the stones of the island themselves: _This is my student,_ he says. 

_I love her, and she is precious to me. Treat her accordingly._

In the moment, Mako remembers that the import of the words missed her entirely. She was mostly concerned with staring at the red-haired woman coming towards them from the giant fig tree. 

…

The first time Mako comes to the Shatterdome from Wyverley, she is twelve and homesick: she likes Wyverley, but misses the Shatterdome and is excited to see the Pentecost and Tamsin again. 

Instead of either of them coming for her at Wyverley, though, she receives instructions to take the bus to Bain, where a guide will meet her: two red-haired Crossing Guards are waiting for her, wearing expeditionary gear. She considers them with skepticism, even though one explains that there has been an outbreak of the Greater Dead near Callibe, so the Pentecost has gone to take care of that. Mako is unconvinced, not entirely willing to believe, on an emotional level, that Stacker could be called away on business more important than bringing her back to the Shatterdome, or that Tamsin might not be well enough to come to fetch her: she is eleven, after all. This was her first year at Wyverley, and Stacker and Tamsin and the Shatterdome are still the center of her world. 

In fact, Mako is sufficiently suspicious of the entire thing that she is beginning to consider whether the wind is blowing strongly enough for her to test the Charter mark on their foreheads: they’re at an impasse until the other man, who had been silent until now, bends down and reaches inside his uniform to draw out a chain. On the end is a silver-colored seal ring showing an image of the Shatterdome with the Ratterlin rushing on either side. Mako has never seen it off Stacker’s hand, and the man turns it over to show the Charter marks glowing on the bottom.

“Know these?”

Mako squints at them. She hasn’t seen this exact combination before, but a north wind is blowing, so the marks are strong and clear even in the morning light. Mako considers, then studies the man’s face. 

He is tall, and Mako is small. With him kneeling and her standing, they are roughly at eye level with each other.

“So long as the marks remain lit, the ring has only been willingly given, without coercion,” Mako says, finally. She isn’t sure what to make of him or this or the shift in her world-view that is occurring. 

“Bright girl,” he says, smiling, touching her shoulder as he straightens. "You do your teacher proud.“ 

Mako notices that he says _teacher_ not _father,_ or _guardian_ , so she decides that she likes him: she likes his brother, too. He is the one who talks, sings, has a word or joke or smile for every person they pass. 

She does not like the son, but in Mako’s opinion, nobody reasonable could expect her to do that. 

Consequently, as a party of four, they ride out on two horses trained by the Scouts, with Mako behind the younger Hansen brother, and Charles riding behind his father. At lunch, Charles quarrels with his father and insists on riding behind Uncle Scott on Lucky. They switch; Mako slides behind Lieutenant Hansen. The horses are strong enough to bear the weight of a man in mail, so the weight of an eleven year old child is little more. Well-trained and brave, the chestnuts let themselves be led through the twisting cliff passageway, and willing again to follow their masters across the narrow stone pathway – the Hansens, Tamsin explains later, are great trainers of horses. Skilled in Charter magic in those ways.

In the moment, Mako only has ears and eyes and heart for the Shatterdome and the people who, to her mind, belong in it. Kind Hercules Hansen and his handsome, charming brother, and even their lovely horses, are secondary. She doesn’t care how uncanny Chuck finds the Sendings – she is home, and she is happy. The day they arrive, she spends all afternoon in Tamsin’s tower with her, head burrowed in Tamsin’s lap, talking to her about Wyverley and occasionally showing Tamsin the Charter Magic she learned in Wyverly. 

Stacker arrives on the third day, a few hours before dinner: he has to bathe and change, but will be rested for dinner, and Mako slips down to the great dining hall early, so that she can see him as soon as possible. Sendings move in and out of the hall, preparing to welcome back their master, the Pentecost, but down at the far end of the hall, Mako sees her father and the older of the two Hansen brothers, the man who had shown her the Pentecost’s ring in Bain. 

She wants to run towards them and throw her arms around Stacker, but some instinct makes her stop: later, Mako is glad for it, because she watches the man take the chain off his neck – there are two rings on it. Mako didn’t notice the second one before, but there is a small flicker of light from a tiny Charter spell to break the chain in order to give the Pentecost back his ring. Mako watches her father mend the chain with another flicker of light. Mako watches, too, with Sendings going to and fro on either side, her father puts the ring back on the fourth finger of his right hand. 

Then, her father leans forward, takes Hansen’s face between his hands. 

_This is my beloved,_ Stacker says, quietly, but with the weight of the Shatterdome behind each word. _I cherish him, and he is precious to me._

…

Mako comes back for some summer holidays, but not others. Sometimes, she comes with Chuck. Sometimes without. Sometimes, both Hansens take them. Sometimes, only one – it depends on the roster schedule for the Scouts on the Wall. 

One summer, Chuck and Mako are at the Shatterdome for the summer but they disappear one afternoon. Tamsin notices when they miss their Charter Magic tutorial from her, which is unusual, but occurs from time to time, and she marks them down for extra homework. When they don’t show for dinner, though, she becomes alarmed: she has the Sendings look, because she is too short of breath these days to move quickly. 

In the end, it’s the Scout dog that came to the island in Chuck’s saddle bag one summer and has grown rapidly since – Max finds Tamsin and leads her, gasping and leaning on a cane, to the children. They’re curled up around each other on the ground on the sunniest part of the island, breathing, but not otherwise moving or responding. There is a circle of ice, four feet wide on every side, around them. Chuck’s head is pillowed on Mako’s arm; her legs are tucked against his. The Book of the Dead lies open at their feet, pages blowing in the wind. Max whines in anxiety and pushes his nose into Tamsin’s palm, but there is nothing she can do: Chuck and Mako have gone into Death, but the last time Tamsin went into –

How much time goes by?   
...

It feels longer than it is, but just as the last of the sunlight starts to go, Mako sits up, ice falling off of her in chunks. A second or two later, Chuck follows, weeping even before his eyes are open: Max springs away from Tamsin’s hand and dances around them in happiness, licking the last of the ice from their faces. They are young and strong, so by the time that the Pentecost and Herc come back from their business in the north, the children have recovered enough to leave their beds, and Mako spends the entire afternoon in Stacker’s study, door closed. She comes out, weeping, eyes red, shoulders drawn up around her face and hands closed into fists. She won’t look at Chuck for the entirety of the rest of the holiday. Stacker is angry, disappointed with her. He has told her so; Mako wears, like a wound, the grief of having disappointed him. 

Tamsin is the one who tells Herc the details: the spell in the Book of the Dead that Mako tried to read the spell aloud to Chuck, but the sounds passed through his head without making an impression. When he tried to read the Book of the Dead himself, his teeth chattered and buzzing filled his bones. Nothing would do, then, but for Mako to lead Chuck into Death – two of the most promising Charter magicians of their generation going into Death together, without a guide, with only minimal training. 

While there, they encountered a creature of the Dead and fought it bravely, but almost lost their lives escaping.

Herc’s face goes pale, and his hand closes around the edge of the table. "Why would they do a thing like that?”

Tamsin looks away, thinking of the white paper boat with the single drop of blood, clutched in two pairs of hands, still child-sized. 

“Chuck wanted to see his mother again.” 

…

When Chuck is eighteen and Mako is eighteen, Stacker sends his bells to Mako at Wyverley, and she sets out. No Crossing Guards meet her at the Bain bus station; instead, she makes her way alone to the garrison, where he finds her father’s old friend from the glory days. The lieutenant is now a colonel, and the next morning, she sets out with the colonel's son, who is the old playmate of her childhood – her first time bloodying another person’s nose, her first kiss, her first trip into Death. The first and last time she hopes to disappoint Stacker deeply. 

They make good speed despite the snow and the dark, but neither of them has ever traveled to the Shatterdome alone. Colonel Hansen could have guided them, and he gave Mako what directions he could, but he explains that he was always guided by the ring her father gave him: he felt it like a pull, guiding him to – the Colonel cannot finish the sentence. He does not have the ring now. He cannot come with them. If the Pentecost is dead, the Wall will need defending.

Chuck and Mako set out alone, on skis. 

At night, they draw a diamond of protection. Carrying a white paper boat in her pocket, Mako steps into Death, and when she comes out, Chuck is pulling his sword out of the throat a creature of the Dead who tried to attack them while she was covered in ice – it has been almost two years since Mako has seen Chuck. He is only somewhat taller, but significantly heavier in the shoulders and the arms. He is comfortable in the uniform of the Scouts in a way that he had not been at sixteen. There is no mistaking him for a boy anymore. 

“Who did you see?” Chuck asks.

“Tamsin,” Mako says, then wipes her tears quickly, before they freeze on her face.

…

Shortly before the cliff face, they realize a Mordicant is on their trail.


	3. Chapter 3

A pop in the fireplace wakes Mako: three logs burn behind a polished grate. Above her, the ceiling is painted blue with silver stars. She has been tucked in a comfortable bed, with sheets smooth under warm blankets. Through the open door, she can make out a room with a stone floor and another fireplace. 

Mako yawns. So does the white cat sitting by the fire, and when the silence stretches on, the cat realizes that Mako fell asleep again. 

He goes back to washing himself: his eyes are usually dark for a cat, and his blue collar knits Charter and Free Magic together.

…

The second time Mako wakes, a cold nose is being thrust under her hand.

“Hello, Max,” she says groggily, then sits up to give him a proper petting – there is more white on his muzzle than she remembers. How old is he now? Seven? Eight? Old for a big Scout dog, and he doesn’t try to jump up into the bed like she remembers from his younger days. Everything else in the room is familiar, though: the warm fire, the blue-painted ceiling with silver stars, the white cat primly stretching himself, front paws down and hind legs straight, the curve of his back conveying his disdain for the canine mess. He limps slightly. 

“Doctor Gottlieb,” Mako says, softly and looking up from Max. 

“Miss Mori,” the Doctor says, with formality and dignity. 

Mako remembers magic lessons in the afternoon sun with Tamsin in her tower, Tamsin wearing robes with a white cat warming itself in the sun at her feet. When Tamsin became too sick to teach them –

…

The Doctor’s voice is somewhere between a purr and a meow, and Max makes a whuffing noise against Mako’s hands. The open door behind him shows how he came in, and through it, Mako hears Chuck’s cursing cut short by the crash of water coming down from the pipes that bring hot water from the springs underneath the island: they eat dinner in the nursery. 

…

At eighteen, Chuck and Mako are too tall for the chairs, so they sit on the floor in front of the fire, and the sendings bring food. Max lies on Chuck’s side.

From a dignified distance, Doctor Gottlieb sits in the half-shadows until the fish arrives, then comes out, tail high, limping slightly on the limb in his left hind leg. How many meals has Mako had sitting on this floor, Doctor Gottlieb savoring his dish of fish, Max begging for scraps after plowing through his bowl of scraps? After finishing, Mako puts her plate down for him to lick, and he tugs away from Chuck to dance over to her. His tail wags even before he bends down to her plate, and Chuck scowls. Mako smiles in the slight, superior manner that she practiced in Etiquette IV. It was recommended for letting someone of inferior social rank know that they were presuming upon familiarity, but due to your breeding and kindness, you had chosen not to take offense: Chuck doesn’t recognize the diagram or the time spent practicing it in front of a mirror prior to final exams, but he knows that it’s from Wyverly and –

He makes comments about how schooling in Ancelstierre has made her soft. If she’d been a Crossing Guard Scout like he’d been these past two years, then she wouldn’t have slept the day away. Mako has to bite her tongue to keep from sticking it out at him. 

…

Old: the walls of the nursery, the curve of the barrel ceilings, Max begging for food, Doctor Gottlieb watching dignity and reserve. 

New: the fire in the nursery grate built high. It’s winter. How many years has it been since Mako was back at the Shatterdome in winter? 

New: the food, which isn’t nursery toasted cheese and bread with fresh milk. Instead, the sendings bring up food of the kind served in the grand hall when the Pentecost returned after weeks of hard fighting. A course of fish, then a course of roast vegetables, then beef in rich gravy, then cheeses from the cellar, then sorbet made from clean snow mixed with fruit preserves, then apples stewed in wine and honey. 

New: the black napkin that the sendings bring to Mako and reverently lay across her lap. In the firelight, it gleams from the tiny silver eagles stitched into it. Mako can make out the star lying between each pair of raised wings.

How many times has Mako seen it presented to Stacker? 

…

“How long has he been gone?” Mako asks the sending that brings her up to the observatory.

The sending hesitates, not sure how to communicate with her, but eventually holds up six finger-shaped assemblages of Charter marks. 

“Days?” Mako says.

The sending shakes its head.

“Weeks?”

This time, a nod, and Mako looks over at Chuck, who is bent over the telescope and studying the chained villagers laboring under the orders of the Mordicant and the Dead. Without the telescope, over the high walls surrounding the Shatterdome, Mako can make out small indistinct shapes dragging planks and pushing wheelbarrows. With the telescope, Mako can make out the individual faces of the villagers being driven to do what the Dead could not: one of the Pentecosts had been a maker of lenses. 

“Is that grave dirt?” Chuck asks. 

“Yes,” Mako says, shortly. She lets Chuck have the telescope back, but he doesn’t bend to it again. Instead, they stand in front of the clear glass windows and count the number of Hands, the number of villagers shackled to each other, ankle to ankle. Mako watches a pair tumble into the water – slippery footing or suicide? They go into the water as one, and Mako flinches when she feels how the first life disappears quickly, blown out like a candle, perhaps due to a head knocked hard against an underwater rock. 

The other lingers. Even in water as cold as the Ratterlin in winter, drowning is a miserable process.

Mako looks away from the river. 

“How long do we have?” she asks. 

“One day, maybe two, ” Doctor Gottlieb answers. 

Chucks makes a disgusted noise, and Mako resists the urge to shove him, hard as she can manage without a running start. "We could take them,“ Chuck says. "There aren’t so many of them. I bet I could fight them.”

Two springs before, Mako took down a Mordicant by herself, but it was almost forty miles from the Wall and weak. Old. The magic holding it together was fading. In contrast, the one on their tail at the cliff-face had been fresh-made, its runes hot upon the mud. Mako remembers the singed smell as it had grabbed at them, and she suspects it burned through the first wooden door in the tunnel passage as much as it battered through. If she faced it again, she would have Chuck and the Doctor with her now, but there were the Hands to consider, strengthened by the bodies of villagers who had died other than by going into the Ratterlin. 

Mako looks down to the dark, dark brown eyes of Doctor Gottlieb. He looks at at her, the mixed Charter and Free magic marks dancing over his collar, and Mako swallows hard.

“Have any of the Paperwings been kept dry?”

…

For Mako, the Shatterdome is marked with memory: Stacker led her through carried her across the stepping stones in his arms. She spent afternoons in Tamsin’s sun-soaked tower, nights underneath the clear dome of the observatory with Doctor Gottlieb, tracking the transit of the stars, Chuck elbowing her when it was his turn to look through the telescope and her doing the same to him: afterwards, sendings waited at the bottom of the ladder to catch children too sleepy to make the climb safely and half-carried them, wrapped in blankets, back to warm beds scented with the apple trees from the orchard, who gave their wood for the frames. 

Mako comes to love Wyverly. She still has memories of the years she spent traveling with her father and mother: vast waves of grass, the smell of the forge, the clang of metal caught between hammer and anvil. Nevertheless, half her childhood lies in summer months at Shatterdome. 

With the Clayr’s water roaring down, sendings dress Mako. 

She comes out of her bedroom and finds Chuck already dressed, wearing mail and surcoat like hers, except his surcoat is dark blue and not marked with the stars and eagles like hers. 

Chuck is on his knees, petting Max one last time. Max sneezes at the smell of the armor, then looks up at Mako and wags his stump of a tail. 

…

Bells across her chest, sword at both their sides: Chuck and Mako have childhood bedrooms at the Shatterdome, matched in every material respect, except his window looks upon the west side of the island, and hers the east. In addition, his ceiling is painted red with gold stars, whereas hers are blue with silver. Otherwise, they are identical. The beds are the same; the braided rugs follow the same pattern. 

When Chuck and Mako were twelve, they went into death together because Chuck still woke at night, sobbing for his mother. 

When they are eighteen, word comes that a schoolroom miss has come to the Wall with a curious bandolier and a stated intention of passing into the Old Kingdom. Wordlessly, even before asking for permission from his commanding officer, Chuck begins gathering his pack.

…

The first summer that Mako spent at the Shatterdome without Chuck was the year he joined the Crossing Guard Scouts. Mako found out when Herc came back to the Shatterdome with the Pentecost, but without his son. Herc apologized, embarrassed. He thought that his son had told her. 

That summer, Mako spent her time working out how to summon a sending that could forge a sword for her. The next summer, she made the sending and sword both. What did she need Chuck for?

The steel is blue-white, and when Mako draws it, Charter marks blaze down its side.

…

Over the edge of the eastern wall, there is a platform made from fresh-sawn pine logs, and the Paperwing eager for flight after years in storage. Mako touches her fingers to the beautiful falcon-shaped eyes. Below, the flood-height Ratterlin roars around the base of the Shatterdome, carrying trees and great floes of ice. She can feel villagers dying, one life winking out after the other, sometimes a cluster up at once, and she looks up from the Paperwing. 

Chuck is watching her from the other side of the Paperwing. In plain ink running down each side of the craft is script that reads, _I was made for Luna Pentecost by Tamsin of the Clayr, who loves her._

…

Mako climbs in first. Chuck takes second. Doctor Gottlieb tucks himself at the rear and watches over the tail.


	4. Chapter 4

Mid-air, gore crows attack. 

Made from the corpses of tortured birds, animated with the fragmented soul of a murdered person, the creatures dive out of the sun and flock to the Paperwing. Vivid eyes gleam over cruel beaks. Talons are eager to tear living flesh. Wind strips their wings to the bone, but the bodies are kept aloft by Free Magic, and there are too many to fight, particularly with the Paperwing so heavily laden. 

Mako whistles a wind into existence, thrusting the Paperwing forward, but she has little experience sustaining Charter marks on air. Abruptly, the wind ceases, and the Paperwing tips nose-down, first a little, then more, then more still. Mako tries to bring the wind again, but her confidence is shaken. The ground rushes up at a terrifying speed, faster and faster; her mouth is dry, and the wind steals out of her breath. 

"Do something!" Chuck shouts, but the words are whipped away from him by the uncontrolled descent. 

Mako tries to raise the marks again, but the wind, the ground, the dryness of her mouth -- 

Cursing, eyes watering from the wind, Chuck undoes Doctor Gottlieb's collar. Freed, the Doctor saves their lives by easing their landing. After that, though, they must deal with the consequences: with a lazy flick, the column of light sets fire to the Paperwing. 

...

"Doctor Gottlieb," Mako calls, trying not to look over her shoulder at the burning Paperwing. "Do you remember us? You taught us. We were your students." 

"Sentiment," the creature says, turning to her. Contempt drips from its tone. 

"You saved us," Chuck shouts from the other side. "We would have died if you hadn't slowed the Paperwing."

"A memory, now purged."

To prove it, the creature goes on facing Mako, but snaps a whip-fast tendril of light at Chuck, who steps aside just in time. Mako cries out a warning, and when Chuck turns, he sees three additional arms coming at him for another direction. Before he can move, one catches him flat in the face, and when he staggers, two others grab him by the chest and the waist, lifting him as easily as a toy. 

Only then does the column of light turn to him. He considers Chuck, angling him a little to the left, then to the right. Charter marks run across the surface of the arms holding Chuck, too bright and fast to be read.

"Amusing," Doctor Gottlieb says, and Chuck snarls. "You believe that if you help her save the Pentecost, she will lov -- "

Blood running from his nose in two great streams, Chuck calls out the marks for _anet, calew, ferhan_. Three sharp blades spring into existence, slicing down at terrible speed. They pass through Doctor Gottlieb as if through water -- and with as much effect. 

Casually, Doctor Gottlieb shakes Chuck hard enough to make his head snap backwards, making blood arc in the air. 

But the distraction worked. Having finally maneuvered into position, Mako throws the ring she has been holding in her hand. For the first tenth of a heartbeat, it follows the arc of her arm; then, as it comes close to Doctor Gottlieb, it flies up, up, up, higher and higher, then comes down in a streak of light, moving impossibly quickly and expanding in size while simultaneously shrinking the Doctor. 

Chuck tumbles the ground with a grunt. 

In the morning, the Doctor pretends he has never been anything but a white cat who enjoys mathematical riddles and careful grooming. Charter marks are the closest that mankind comes to the handwriting of the Bright Shiners. 

...

In the morning, to avoid talking about what Doctor Gottlieb almost said aloud while in his unbound form, what they have both known for years, but have edged around in one of the few things they have ever been able to agree on -- Chuck and Mako squabble. 

Chuck holds his broken nose with his fingers. Mako's right hip and shoulder ache from trying to catch Chuck as he fell from Doctor Gottlieb. How could Chuck undo the collar? He wouldn't have had to undo the collar if she hadn't failed at being the Pentecost. How could Chuck be so irresponsible? She is incompetent; he saved their _lives_. Thanks would be appreciated. Actually, that was the Doctor, no thanks to Chuck, who was smacked in the face ten seconds into the fight that he knew was coming. 

Angry, feeling guilty about failing to save the Paperwing and -- and other things, Mako stomps away, saying something about getting water. 

The closest source of water turns out to be a burial chamber, open to the sky, but protected by magic, where green paths run between the ships over gravel paths, now grown over with low vegetation. A silver stream winds around the chamber. Mako refills her water bottle, then Chuck's water bottle, then the spares from their packs, and sets all four beneath an alder tree. 

Then she begins to explore the fourteen ships. 

...

The figureheads on the first two ships are uncannily alike -- twins, Mako concludes, after studying each of them in turn. Mid-thirties. Handsome. Confident. Decorated with medallions and chains. One has his right hand raised, the other his left. One frowns; the other has a scar underneath his right eye, the faintest of lines. Spells of final death lie over both their feet.

...

The next two are starkly, sharply different from each other. 

The man is tall. Mako guesses that he is as tall as Stacker, possibly even taller than that, though his features are shaped differently, such that Mako guesses that in life, he was pale, possibly closer to Chuck and his father in skin tone. The cast of his face, his broad shoulders and long, rangy arms remind Mako of the farmers that she has seen, scratching out a small living on the small farms north of the Wall. Their families lead difficult lives on stony fields and a handful of jealously guarded livestock, but Mako can see a trace of a smile in the left corner of this man's mouth. 

The woman, though -- the woman is short. Narrowly built. Mako catches her breath, because she has never seen another person in the Old Kingdom whose features look so much like her own. Their mouths are different; their chins and brows are different, but Mako leans forward to study all the ways in which they are similar. The broad cheekbones, the bridge of the nose, the angling of the eyes. The hood of her hauberk is pushed back, so Mako can see straight hair, cut short for fighting and convenience Mako guesses that in life, she and the woman would have been almost the same height. 

The woman has her left hand laid protectively across her lower abdomen. On the fourth finger of her left hand, she wears a small signet ring with the device of a rearing monster, mouth open. When Mako turns back to the man and looks closely, she realizes that he has the same figure tattooed on the back of his left hand. 

A husband and wife, the latter of whom might have been pregnant at the time of her death. Both of them are wearing chain mail. Both of them have swords. 

There are spells of final death at their feet. 

...

Initially, Mako dismisses the next two as twins, like the first two. She begins to turn to the next set of ships, but then stops. She looks back over her shoulder, and comes back to them. After a moment, she realizes that they are not twins: there are subtle differences in the shape of their jaw and brow and mouth. She suspects the one on the right of them is slightly older, because she can see the beginnings of crow's feet in the corners of his eyes, and frown lines between his eyebrows. His eyes are closed, and his mouth is shut. His left hand rests on the hilt of his sword; his right hangs loosely. 

The other man -- 

...

Mako realizes, belatedly, three things about him. 

First, with a flush creeping up her cheeks as her eyes move downwards, Mako realizes he is naked. His chain mail and clothes are in a curious pile at his feet. Scars mark one shoulder and half of his chest. 

Second, he is _not_ circumcised. 

Third, there is no spell of final death at his feet. 

...

When Mako comes back to the campsite, bearing four flasks of water and trailing a largely naked man trying to cover himself with his hands, Chuck and Mako have a fight. Chuck argues that they are hampered enough by the loss of the Paperwing. They do not need a useless person who has no gear, no food, and no memory of what happened to him. Mako snaps back that they cannot leave him in the wilderness, and goes back to rooting through her pack for something that the man can cover himself with. The man himself stays largely quiet and does not look anyone in the eye; in frustration, Chuck asks Doctor Gottlieb what he thinks of the situation, and the Doctor pads over and touches his tongue to the Charter mark on the man's forehead, but refuses to say what he has learned, not that either Mako or Chuck ask, because they're embroiled in an argument. 

"He's coming," Mako says, still digging through her pack. 

"He is not," Chuck says, sword still in hand.

"Put that away, and get out your spare breeches and boots. I think my shirt will fit him, but nothing else."

Chuck snorts, and makes the tactical mistake of trying to stare Mako down, but his childhood pet was a cheerful Scout dog. In contrast, as much as anybody can make a pet or forge a friendship with a vastly powerful creature of Free Magic that chose to be temporarily bound to material form and mortal considerations by Charter Magic -- Mako can outstare a cat. Eventually, Chuck puts his sword away, snarling that he refused to lend the man anything of his, as it was all stamped with the insignia of the Scouts, and had to be earned. 

...

Eventually, the man quietly suggests that they go back and get clothes and weaponry for him from the ships: there was plenty there. He is sure some of it would fit him. 

Chuck's mood rebounds briefly watching the man wince while picking his way over bits of sharp gravel and rock in the tunnel, but begins to decline once he sees how much older the man looks in Mako's shirt and a red-and-gold kilt and leather boots. It deteriorates precipitously when he sees Mako's appraising, appreciative expression at the small gold hoops the man pushes through his ears: Chuck almost throws a punch when the man drops to his knees and calls Mako _milady_ and offers her, hilt first, two swords to be pledged to --

...

"What fucking kind of name is Touchstone, anyway?" Chuck says, loudly, as Touchstone leads them up the secret staircase out of the sinkhole.


End file.
